PUBLICATION OF THE FIRST TWO VOLUMES OF THE “HISTORY OF THE UNITED
NETHERLANDS.”--THEIR RECEPTION.
We know something of the manner in which Mr. Motley collected his
materials. We know the labors, the difficulties, the cost of his toils
among the dusty records of the past. What he gained by the years he spent
in his researches is so well stated by himself that I shall borrow his
own words:--
“Thanks to the liberality of many modern governments of Europe, the
archives where the state secrets of the buried centuries have so
long mouldered are now open to the student of history. To him who
has patience and industry, many mysteries are thus revealed which no
political sagacity or critical acumen could have divined. He leans
over the shoulder of Philip the Second at his writing-table, as the
King spells patiently out, with cipher-key in hand, the most
concealed hieroglyphics of Parma, or Guise, or Mendoza. He reads
the secret thoughts of 'Fabius' [Philip II.] as that cunctative
Roman scrawls his marginal apostilles on each dispatch; he pries
into all the stratagems of Camillus, Hortensius, Mucius, Julius,
Tullius, and the rest of those ancient heroes who lent their names
to the diplomatic masqueraders of the sixteenth century; he enters
the cabinet of the deeply pondering Burghley, and takes from the
most private drawer the memoranda which record that minister's
unutterable doubtings; he pulls from the dressing-gown folds of the
stealthy, soft-gliding Walsingham the last secret which he has
picked from the Emperor's pigeon-holes or the Pope's pocket, and
which not Hatton, nor Buckhurst, nor Leicester, nor the Lord
Treasurer is to see,--nobody but Elizabeth herself; he sits
invisible at the most secret councils of the Nassaus and Barneveld
and Buys, or pores with Farnese over coming victories and vast
schemes of universal conquest; he reads the latest bit of scandal,
the minutest characteristic of king or minister, chronicled by the
gossiping Venetians for the edification of the Forty; and after all
this prying and eavesdropping, having seen the cross-purposes, the
bribings, the windings in the dark, he is not surprised if those who
were systematically deceived did not always arrive at correct
conclusions.”
The fascination of such a quest is readily conceivable. A drama with real
characters, and the spectator at liberty to go behind the scenes and look
upon and talk with the kings and queens between the acts; to examine the
scenery, to handle the properties, to study the “make up” of the imposing
personages of full-dress histories; to deal with them all as Thackeray
has done with the Grand Monarque in one of his caustic sketches,--this
would be as exciting, one might suppose, as to sit through a play one
knows by heart at Drury Lane or the Theatre Francais, and might furnish
occupation enough to the curious idler who was only in search of
entertainment. The mechanical obstacles of half-illegible manuscript, of
antiquated forms of speech, to say nothing of the intentional obscurities
of diplomatic correspondence, stand, however, in the way of all but the
resolute and unwearied scholar. These difficulties, in all their complex
obstinacy, had been met and overcome by the heroic efforts, the
concentrated devotion, of the new laborer in the unbroken fields of
secret history.
Without stopping to take breath, as it were,--for his was a task 'de
longue haleine,'--he proceeded to his second great undertaking.
The first portion--consisting of two volumes--of the “History of the
United Netherlands” was published in the year 1860. It maintained and
increased the reputation he had already gained by his first history.
“The London Quarterly Review” devoted a long article to it, beginning
with this handsome tribute to his earlier and later volumes:--
“Mr. Motley's 'History of the Rise of the Dutch Republic' is already
known and valued for the grasp of mind which it displays, for the
earnest and manly spirit in which he has communicated the results of
deep research and careful reflection. Again he appears before us,
rich with the spoils of time, to tell the story of the United
Netherlands from the time of William the Silent to the end of the
eventful year of the Spanish Armada, and we still find him in every
way worthy of this 'great argument.' Indeed, it seems to us that he
proceeds with an increased facility of style, and with a more
complete and easy command over his materials. These materials are
indeed splendid, and of them most excellent use has been made. The
English State Paper Office, the Spanish archives from Simancas, and
the Dutch and Belgian repositories, have all yielded up their
secrets; and Mr. Motley has enjoyed the advantage of dealing with a
vast mass of unpublished documents, of which he has not failed to
avail himself to an extent which places his work in the foremost
rank as an authority for the period to which it relates. By means
of his labor and his art we can sit at the council board of Philip
and Elizabeth, we can read their most private dispatches. Guided by
his demonstration, we are enabled to dissect out to their ultimate
issues the minutest ramifications of intrigue. We join in the
amusement of the popular lampoon; we visit the prison-house; we
stand by the scaffold; we are present at the battle and the siege.
We can scan the inmost characters of men and can view them in their
habits as they lived.”
After a few criticisms upon lesser points of form and style, the writer
says:--
“But the work itself must be read to appreciate the vast and
conscientious industry bestowed upon it. His delineations are true
and life-like, because they are not mere compositions written to
please the ear, but are really taken from the facts and traits
preserved in those authentic records to which he has devoted the
labor of many years. Diligent and painstaking as the humblest
chronicler, he has availed himself of many sources of information
which have not been made use of by any previous historical writer.
At the same time he is not oppressed by his materials, but has
sagacity to estimate their real value, and he has combined with
scholarly power the facts which they contain. He has rescued the
story of the Netherlands from the domain of vague and general
narrative, and has labored, with much judgment and ability, to
unfold the 'Belli causas, et vitia, et modos,' and to assign to
every man and every event their own share in the contest, and their
own influence upon its fortunes. We do not wonder that his earlier
publication has been received as a valuable addition, not only to
English, but to European literature.”
One or two other contemporary criticisms may help us with their side
lights. A critic in “The Edinburgh Review” for January, 1861, thinks that
“Mr. Motley has not always been successful in keeping the graphic variety
of his details subordinate to the main theme of his work.” Still, he
excuses the fault, as he accounts it, in consideration of the new light
thrown on various obscure points of history, and--
“it is atoned for by striking merits, by many narratives of great
events faithfully, powerfully, and vividly executed, by the clearest
and most life-like conceptions of character, and by a style which,
if it sacrifices the severer principles of composition to a desire
to be striking and picturesque, is always vigorous, full of
animation, and glowing with the genuine enthusiasm of the writer.
Mr. Motley combines as an historian two qualifications seldom found
united,--to great capacity for historical research he adds much
power of pictorial representation. In his pages we find characters
and scenes minutely set forth in elaborate and characteristic
detail, which is relieved and heightened in effect by the artistic
breadth of light and shade thrown across the broader prospects of
history. In an American author, too, we must commend the hearty
English spirit in which the book is written; and fertile as the
present age has been in historical works of the highest merit, none
of them can be ranked above these volumes in the grand qualities of
interest, accuracy, and truth.”
A writer in “Blackwood” (May, 1861) contrasts Motley with Froude somewhat
in the way in which another critic had contrasted him with Prescott.
Froude, he says, remembers that there are some golden threads in the
black robe of the Dominican. Motley “finds it black and thrusts it
farther into the darkness.”
Every writer carries more or less of his own character into his book, of
course. A great professor has told me that there is a personal flavor in
the mathematical work of a man of genius like Poisson. Those who have
known Motley and Prescott would feel sure beforehand that the impulsive
nature of the one and the judicial serenity of the other would as surely
betray themselves in their writings as in their conversation and in their
every movement. Another point which the critic of “Blackwood's Magazine”
has noticed has not been so generally observed: it is what he calls “a
dashing, offhand, rattling style,”--“fast” writing. It cannot be denied
that here and there may be detected slight vestiges of the way of writing
of an earlier period of Motley's literary life, with which I have no
reason to think the writer just mentioned was acquainted. Now and then I
can trace in the turn of a phrase, in the twinkle of an epithet, a faint
reminiscence of a certain satirical levity, airiness, jauntiness, if I
may hint such a word, which is just enough to remind me of those perilous
shallows of his early time through which his richly freighted argosy had
passed with such wonderful escape from their dangers and such very slight
marks of injury. That which is pleasant gayety in conversation may be
quite out of place in formal composition, and Motley's wit must have had
a hard time of it struggling to show its spangles in the processions
while his gorgeous tragedies went sweeping by.